This room, which was the
bed-chamber, reception-room, and study of the arbitrary Dictator, was
a garret in the roof of Duplay's humble dwelling. One small window,
opening upon the tiles, looked into the court-yard in which were stored
the planks or blocks necessary to the cabinet-maker's trade. A small
wooden bedstead, a long deal table, and four or five rush-bottomed
chairs, constituted the whole furniture of the apartment.
A deal shelf ran along the wail beneath the slanting roof, and held his
small treasure of books; and more than half of this humble row were
manuscripts of his own, which he had numbered, arranged, and bound with
that methodical exactness, which was a part of his strange character.
He was sitting at a table covered with papers, on which he had now been
laboriously preparing instructions for those who, under him, carried on
the rule of terror; and arranging the measured words with which, at the
Jacobins, he was to encourage his allies to uphold him in the bloody
despotism which he had seized.
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